Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Issues dealing with gameplay balance.
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The_Convertant
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Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby The_Convertant » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 10:41 am

This has been my question from the time RT was out. While most abilities are strong and useful, it seems some of them are rarely used. Til elite I still don't see any changes on them. Here is some examples:


1. Catachan's smoke grenade

The smoke grenade is really cool. It provides 50% range fire resistance and suppression resistance. The radius is roughly enough for 2 guardsmen squads to hide inside.

But players prefer to spend the energy on throwing pipes, blasting shotgun shells or placing tiny body bombs that are invincible to venom cannons. Mostly because crowd control abilities in most cases are much more reliable to prevent damage. How can you die if they cannot hit you, except the commissar.


2. Swarmlord's Blade Flurry

Blade Flurry isn't that strong comparing to other super units'. 200 melee damage and weapon knockback, ugh. But the cast time is very short. It makes a potential anti melee and CC for SL.

The problem is that Leech Essence and Blade Flurry both cause a ton of energy. Although the Swarmlord has 200, its abilities snap more than 2/3 of it's total energy pool. And remember it has the same energy regen like other units. So actually it takes it double the time to regain enough energy to cast its abilities. And for SL Leech Essence is a key for survival.

Casting blade flurry = not able to cast essence for 20 seconds + eating up potential energy for second cast of leech essence.


3. Eldar Avatar's that something like furious farting ability

Mostly shares the case of Swarmlord. Blowing away termies is cool, but this time players would like to sacrifice Avatar's survival for cssting Wailing Doom for more damage output. Hell, Wailing Doom hurts, and it has just 30 second CD. With all those CCs in spess elfs' arsenal, really not that hard to land a good wall of explosion on the enemy.

Comparing this to the fart ability it has (I don't even recall its name), it has same long arse cast time (maybe longer), and only helps out the burning big dude's own survival, against melee, while its greatest weakness is plamsa vomit.



Imo the biggest problem for these abilities is the energy cost. Their utilities are kinda outstanding, but you better save the energy for some cooler shets cuz they are much useful in most circumstances.
By just tweaking the energy cost I believe they will become more vulnerable, and may not harm the general balance. After all, will you care about the 200 damage on your nobz/termites when you want to beat the Avatar into (more) pieces?
Last edited by The_Convertant on Sun 28 Feb, 2016 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Lag
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Lag » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 3:32 pm

Even though it gives nice ranged fire resistance, the Cata nade rarely helps with suppression. Source: been using it for ages.
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Lichtbringer
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Lichtbringer » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 4:15 pm

I can say that I use the Avatars "Kaihnes Wrath" very often.
It has some distinct advantages over Wailing Doom.

1. It works superbly with a Seercouncil or with Banshees, because... it does no friendly fire. Then your own meleeunits can whack away on the scattered and supressed enemys melee.
2. Wailing doom doesn't hit enemy engaged meleeunits. They are spread out around the avatar so it at best hits 1 (termies) or 2 (Nobs) models, if the enemy is paying any attention he can pull them behind you.
3. The Avatar doesn't do much dps anyway. Yes, it costs energy.
4. Enemy units either can't dodge it or atleast never attempt too. If they dodge it that is just as much disruption.
5. It's also great when the Avatar is alone and running away too save his ass :D It is great for survival of the Avatar. I don't know why you think he sacrifices survival when using it? Maybe if a Lascannon is shooting at you aswell. But then you run out of range, and use the ability then.

I don't know, I find it as usefull as wailing doom. They both have distinct situation in which you should use them.
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Oddnerd
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Oddnerd » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 4:59 pm

Agree with the catachan smoke grenade. It has such a short cooldown and provides great ranged damage resistance. When you're entrenched and engaged in a static firefight, those smoke grenades can go a long way. They appear to affect vehicles too, so that sentinel can sit and take bleed-free damage for ages as well.
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egewithin
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby egewithin » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 5:39 pm

I generally use olrialable, or whatever is that, and shotgun blast oftenly; I generally want to save energy for those 2 abilitys. In case of suppression I generally go for throwing bombs on the set up team insted of smoking my army :D
Atlas

Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Atlas » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 6:06 pm

Problem with the Cata smoke is that it is competing for energy with the way more vital shotgun blast and barrage. The ability itself is perfectly fine.
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Cyris
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Cyris » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 7:24 pm

Atlas wrote:Problem with the Cata smoke is that it is competing for energy with the way more vital shotgun blast and barrage. The ability itself is perfectly fine.


The cast time is a real pain too. To use it well, I feel I need to intentionally push my GM blob into a bad engagement (so the enemy stays and fights) then surprise them with 50% damage resistance. Strong combo, but because of the aforementioned bad engagements I initiate, any disruption to the catas or a delay in the smoke going off, can spell disaster, especially in t2 when enemy aoe becomes a thing. As such, I more often spend energy on the other 3 amazing abilities instead.

Pro tip: never let catas have full energy. If they do, drop an ied. These invisible sight wards are amazing, and I hear you can even detonate them!

In short, catas have so many great abilities that it's hard to find a good time to use smoke, as it is slow, situational and risky. That said, dropping it in a hwt or turret (Las or heavy) is downright unfair ;)
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Oddnerd
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Oddnerd » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 7:28 pm

Cyris wrote:
Atlas wrote:Problem with the Cata smoke is that it is competing for energy with the way more vital shotgun blast and barrage. The ability itself is perfectly fine.


The cast time is a real pain too. To use it well, I feel I need to intentionally push my GM blob into a bad engagement (so the enemy stays and fights) then surprise them with 50% damage resistance. Strong combo, but because of the aforementioned bad engagements I initiate, any disruption to the catas or a delay in the smoke going off, can spell disaster, especially in t2 when enemy aoe becomes a thing. As such, I more often spend energy on the other 3 amazing abilities instead.

Pro tip: never let catas have full energy. If they do, drop an ied. These invisible sight wards are amazing, and I hear you can even detonate them!

In short, catas have so many great abilities that it's hard to find a good time to use smoke, as it is slow, situational and risky. That said, dropping it in a hwt or turret (Las or heavy) is downright unfair ;)


I agree that for aggressive plays it is too slow (and doesn't cover enough of an area) and not worth the energy, but if you find yourself in a mid-late game shoot out over a VP, a mobile base chimera with its 30% damage resistance and a smoke grenade near it becomes an amazing damage sponge (Sentinel Enforcer claims to have fended off PM spam with this approach).
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby MaxPower » Sat 27 Feb, 2016 8:13 pm

The "flashbang" of the asms...it doesnt do anything worthwhile, drains your energy which you'd prolly save for a melta throw or another jump or if you have the sarge, the merciless strike.
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The_Convertant
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby The_Convertant » Sun 28 Feb, 2016 3:33 am

Lichtbringer wrote:I can say that I use the Avatars "Kaihnes Wrath" very often.
It has some distinct advantages over Wailing Doom.

1. It works superbly with a Seercouncil or with Banshees, because... it does no friendly fire. Then your own meleeunits can whack away on the scattered and supressed enemys melee.
2. Wailing doom doesn't hit enemy engaged meleeunits. They are spread out around the avatar so it at best hits 1 (termies) or 2 (Nobs) models, if the enemy is paying any attention he can pull them behind you.
3. The Avatar doesn't do much dps anyway. Yes, it costs energy.
4. Enemy units either can't dodge it or atleast never attempt too. If they dodge it that is just as much disruption.
5. It's also great when the Avatar is alone and running away too save his ass :D It is great for survival of the Avatar. I don't know why you think he sacrifices survival when using it? Maybe if a Lascannon is shooting at you aswell. But then you run out of range, and use the ability then.

I don't know, I find it as usefull as wailing doom. They both have distinct situation in which you should use them.


I may make it unclear. Actually I was talking about spess elf players sacrifice energy for furious fart to cast Wailing Doom, as Wailing Doom provides excellent damage output.
And yes, the fart is useful, but it competes energy with Wailing Doom. As for my experience, if elder players don't see a very serious incoming melee threat to the Avatar, most of them will not try to save the energy and will throw another Wailing Doom for maximum destruction, which I believe makes the fart ability underused.

Atlas wrote:Problem with the Cata smoke is that it is competing for energy with the way more vital shotgun blast and barrage. The ability itself is perfectly fine.


That is exactly what I believe. The ability isn't bad. It just needs to cost less.

MaxPower wrote:The "flashbang" of the asms...it doesnt do anything worthwhile, drains your energy which you'd prolly save for a melta throw or another jump or if you have the sarge, the merciless strike.


I don't think this ability suits well on ASM. They already have 2 very strong CCs that send people flying. If a spess mehreen player wants to stop something from firing their guns with ASM , he/she will send them to jump on the squad.
The only thing the blind grenade is beneficial to ASM imo is that it can be thrown at a safer distance, as for sometimes enemies with power melee squads waiting behind the range blobs it is not a good idea to fly the HI into the power armour grinder.
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Forestradio
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Forestradio » Sun 28 Feb, 2016 4:51 pm

All smoke grenade abilities are pretty much fine, the only issue is that they have a huge windup time before throwing, and this applies to all of them, kommandoes/razorbacks/rhinos/catachans all have this problem where their smoke grenades take a really long time to activate which causes rage-worthy delays in the midst of combat.

Just reduce the amount of time it takes to use the ability (across all of them) and you'll see way more smoke grenade use.

MaxPower wrote:The "flashbang" of the asms...it doesnt do anything worthwhile, drains your energy which you'd prolly save for a melta throw or another jump or if you have the sarge, the merciless strike.
Honestly this ability should just be removed entirely, it doesn't serve any purpose or fit into the design of ASM as a unit and this is proven by the fact that literally no one uses it (in like the last two years I've seen it used twice), it basically only exists so that the upgrade can be called "Thunder and Lightning."
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby egewithin » Sun 28 Feb, 2016 5:16 pm

Forestradio wrote:All smoke grenade abilities are pretty much fine, the only issue is that they have a huge windup time before throwing

This

Honestly this ability should just be removed entirely, it doesn't serve any purpose or fit into the design of ASM as a unit and this is proven by the fact that literally no one uses it (in like the last two years I've seen it used twice)


And this. I think Thunder and Lightning was a mistake of the designers. They said like ; '' Well we had that thing in campaing so why not in the multi player? '' I don't say it was a bad idea. Unluckly it didn't work out. I would vote for removing stunbomb and decreasing the power cost of melta bomb.
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Lost Son of Nikhel » Sun 28 Feb, 2016 5:51 pm

IMHO Blind Grenade isn't bad. The problem is Jump is simply too good.

It happens something similar with Raptors. Demonic Strenght isn't a bad ability, simply Jump is too good and too much energy hungry.
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Re: Underused abilities (NOT WARGEARS)

Postby Cheekie Monkie » Sun 28 Feb, 2016 11:16 pm

I'd use blind grenades more often if it reduced unit accuracy, for example, as this will arguably help more against mass ranged blobs more than even a second jump.
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